"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Public School Renewal 2014 and Beyond

Jim Horn

The public education renewal agenda embraces the values
of democracy, fair play, inclusion, equal opportunity, and public school
governance structure and operations of the people, by the people, and for the
people.The new public school agenda welcomes the participation of philanthropists, business, and industry to do what they are
most capable of doing, which is to provide resources and strategies to create
opportunities in communities where hope is in short supply, and to fund
initiatives that educators, social scientists, and citizens agree will grow
healthy communities with well-prepared, engaged citizens who are able and
adaptive workers.

Rather than funding segregated corporate charter chain
schools, public education renewal solicits the Business Roundtable and the
large corporate foundations to engage practical strategies to achieve their
ostensible goal of a citizenry prepared to compete in the global marketplace.Continuing research that began with the
Coleman Study of the 1960s consistently finds that integrated, diverse, and
inclusive schools provide more higher achieving learning environments than segregated
classrooms.Most recently, Scott Page and other
researchers have found that functional diversity provides advantages to
group problem solving that expertise, alone, cannot match.Page suggests that learning environments that
focus on “acquisition of new perspectives and heuristics” (Page, 2004, p.
16389) can provide large advantages to organizations seeking to solve thorny
problems or to create new products and services.

Public school renewal requires of the federal government new programs and generous grants to states and cities that
initiate economic integration programs that increase diversity.Rather than incentivizing the continuing
resegregation of American schools with hundreds of millions of dollars for segregative
charters, public education renewal calls for substantive support for magnet
school programs and other new integrative initiatives, as well as federal
legislation and a Presidential priority that makes school integration a national goal once more.That can only be accomplished with a renewed
commitment to the Fair
Housing Act, an initiative that was signed just after the assassination of
Dr. King and that has been left to wither on the vine in the decades
since.Diversity in schools can only
reach its full potential when the community housing patterns reflect that same
diversity.

To compete with other countries in developing an economy
that provides full employment, we must have the best-prepared teachers in the
world, and that can only be done with the best teacher preparation
programs.Rather than demeaning or
reducing preparation of teacher candidates in the science and art of teaching with
alternative truncated programs focused on raising achievement test scores,
public school renewal challenges business leaders to provide resources for chairs
of excellence in university teaching programs that will attract the best
scholars from neuroscience, sociology, child psychology, systems theory,
pediatrics, and other relevant fields to complement the conventional elements
of teacher preparation.

If teaching is to be a profession that attracts the ablest
and most dedicated candidates, it must offer competitive starting salaries with
other degree fields, and it must demand from its members the full dedication to
the learning health of children, to the same degree that physicians are dedicated
to the health of their patients.If this
imperative is to be realized, children’s learning needs must be carefully
diagnosed with psychological and sociological knowledge from within the school
and the community for which the school remains a reflection.

Rather than imposing a universal curriculum that threatens
to stunt diversity of thought and the capacity to adapt and appreciate new
perspectives and environments, public school renewal requires multicultural and
interdisciplinary learning parameters that remain sensitive to the needs of
children, parents, and the well-being of democratic communities.For the vast ecological, cultural, and
economic problems of the world to be faced and resolved together so that all
may benefit, public school renewal must give children the power to direct and
transform the future, rather than to become its victim by having the scope of a
humane and democratic educational vision and mission replaced by narrow
economic and behavioral catechisms.

Finally, public school renewal depends upon a broader societal
commitment to reducing income inequality and eliminating child poverty.The public schools remain a reflection of our
commitment to the communities they serve and help to sustain.The false notion that schools, alone, can
solve the economic, cultural, and political challenges of our society remains a
impermeable barrier to renewing public education in ways that help reunite us
so that our differences may be celebrated and turned into assets, rather than serving
as corrosive rationales for sorting, dividing, and demanding the most from
those with the least to give, while offering nothing in return from those who
demand accountability but accept none.